BTM_Pix

It's interesting that it has that angled grip like the Sigma DP Quattros. I noticed it got the usual losing their shit reaction from commenters on DPReview who'd never buy it anyway. Which is fast becoming my barometer of what might be interesting to take a look at. Except that Zenith branded M. I'm with them on that one.

I didn't catch what the camera was he was demoing footage of but it was very nice wide open aperture shots of cats. He should patent that style as Shallow Depth Of Feline.

Hang on...I have remembered something that I saw that caught my eye. Phil Bloom has a very fetching wooden case for his Macbook. Here he is calmly dealing with some bark/sap related issue that caused the audio from it not to work in his very well attended live demo.

In non hot dog related Photokina news.... I had a look at the Laowa cine lens and it looks quite promising. You'd have to waterboard them to get the price out of them though so it may prove to be more expensive than people might imagine. Erm.... Yeah, I should probably work on my show report game a bit more as I can't remember anything else that really caught my eye.

Hot Dog update.... Four Euros. Big queue. Swerved.

Just got an "Exciting News About The Pocket 4K.......But Not For You" email off CVP.

I have had zero from them. Then again I do moan my tits off at them every time I buy something

Game on. Wasn't expecting Crane to have such a big booth. Must be some new gimbals.

I have also arrived and will be available for ongoing hot dog updates as long as I get on the right train to the show. Otherwise you can expect updates about Cologne cathedral. And hot dogs within it's immediate vicinity.

Who was that with?

Being a complete cheapskate, at more than £3K saving per lens against the current Leica offerings for the SL then I can live with the compromises though

Sorry, I left the wink emoji off that !

There shouldn't really be too much of a mystery about the 24mp version of the Panasonic . If you can't wait until next Spring to see what it can do there are loads of example images from it here https://www.flickr.com/groups/slleica/

I took a hacksaw to an ef-s lens that I got cheap to fit on a speedbooster. The performance of the lens was so crap though that I might as well have sawn both ends off it.

How much are the hot dogs?

As you say, disregarding the wind noise, I was quite surprised how good it was when he was reading the names out. I'd be interested to in how much you could get away with in a pinch if it had a set of the Rycote Micro Windjammers attached.

Funny you should say that because are actually being taken to Photokina on Thursday afternoon and can be evaluated at the official EOSHD press event. Well, when I say official press event, I actually mean wherever on the show floor I end up bumping into @Andrew Reid

Can't believe they didn't announce the fourth member of this new alliance that is making compatible products for Panasonic and Leica cameras

You might want to consider using a viewfinder app for your phone like the Cadrage one. It simulates the FOV you will get from all different formats and lenses so you can quickly get a preview of what you are going to get before you set all your real gear up. It works with the common wide angle adapters on the phone as well to simulate much wider lenses. It might be useful in your situation as well @kye as I know you like to keep stealthy so would delay the moment at which you get your real camera out of the bag in the situation you described above https://www.cadrage.at

You mean convertible as in the mount swap service Sigma currently offer or an adapter? Novoflex do an EF to L mount adapter already but its quite expensice so I'm hoping the first thing that comes out of this relationship is Sigma releasing is an L version of their MC-11 adapter.

The crop factor doesn't put off as many people as you'd imagine as the weight, size and cost benefit versus using the native SL lenses are quite considerable. Something like the 23mm Summicron is a great compact option for SL owners looking for an affordable compact 35mm equivalent. With the 4K being an APS-C crop on the SL anyway it doesn't hurt them there either as they have the same FOV in stills and video. Obviously the other way round is a rarity due to the physical size and price tag of the SL lenses but with affordable versions that would change to be as it is with other APS-C cameras where people use FF lenses with them with an eye to the upgrade path of using them with FF cameras down the line. Unless Sigma walk away from Foveon, which seems unlikely as they have a commitment to it which goes beyond financial, or they pull a rabbit out of the hat with it's low light performance, it's always going to be a specific use camera. That is fine but the problem comes with getting people to make a commitment to a camera like that when it has a restrictive mount that means when you aren't using the camera you aren't using the lenses either. By having a shared mount, not only will Sigma be able to have cost benefits from not having to produce short runs of lenses for their own camera but it should also stimulate sales of the cameras themselves if people can see additional use for the lenses. When I'm not using my SD Quattro, the lenses for it sit idly in the drawer as well whereas if it was SL mount then they'd see more use and probably entice me to buy the next generation of it and more lenses. A case in point is that I would love to have the 50-100 ART for it but I cant bring myself to buy it in SA mount when if I bought it in EF mount it would see far more action on multiple different cameras. I can't even try one out if I wanted to as no dealer is keen to hold the SA mount version in stock and on demo which is something that will ultimately kill off the SD Quattro range if it carries on like that.

For Panasonic? Because it exists and is a known entity for them so they can get it out quickly and I imagine their lets just say ''close" relationship with Leica in terms of developing the existing cameras that currently sit behind it means that it will be license free as well. Plus, its already been proven through 3rd parties to be AF adaptable with EF and newer Nikon E lenses so it isn't a dead end from that point of view which will be appealing to early adopters. The potential immediate additional market for them for lenses is not just SL owners though but also owners of T/TL/TL2 and CL which shares the mount, all of whom would welcome some alternatives to a similarly limited (in terms of range not necessarily quality) and price restrictive lens line up for APS-C. For Leica, it would also act as a gateway drug for those owners to step up to an SL and ditto for SL owners to pick up a TL2 or CL as a backup camera. And also, of course, for the Leica clad versions of these new FF cameras that will follow a few months behind. For Sigma, it also means their next generation of cameras can benefit from having a mount that is less restrictive than their current SA one. Its a big win for all three of them in my view and, as I say, for early adopters of the Panasonic it takes away a lot of the concern about investing in 'yet another new mount'.

No, you actually gain on the wide end. If you look at the picture of it side by side with the GX80, the portion inside the rectangle is what you would get if you used at the MFT setting so it is exactly the same FOV as the GX80. But because that particular MFT lens covers a much wider area than the 80% of S35 that is usually the case you can set it to 100% of S35 to be able to use the rest of the image, hence the 12mm is now a 10mm. Being able to select the scale mapping is like having a lossless wide angle adapter built in when you need it and the Prime Zoom function is like having a lossless telephoto adapter built in when you need it as well. I've done this for you with the SL and FZ2500 to see it in context with a couple of other cameras. It won't get smaller than that (top handle removed here) but obviously deepening on what you attach to it then it can get much bigger !

And if you add a cheap £20 LANC zoom controller like this one you can have focus control on the camera zoom rocker and still have zoom control (servo or Prime Zoom) on this.